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Whenever I search for a program in Gnome Shell's search panel, some contacts from Pidgin will appear. E.g. when I search for Chromium, by typing chr, Chris Andersen will appear. I don't want this to happen. Is it possible to disable this function?

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Please define your question. For more details on best practices consider reading the FAQ on asking questions. Specifically is this related to Gnome-Do or what? Please describe. Regards, – Ringtail Apr 3 '12 at 20:16
I think it's pretty clear. It's not related to Gnome-Do. It's just normal gnome-shell behaviour. If you don't know what I'm talking about: sudo apt get install pidgin gnome-shell, then import contacts in Pidgin, after that, log in into a Gnome-Shell session, press the Super key, and start typing a name of one of your Pidgin contacts. His name will appear in the results. I don't want this to happen, the only thing I want to see is applications, directories and files. – Exeleration-G Apr 3 '12 at 21:59
Edited your question. "Gnome 3" is very ambiguous since there are two official Gnome 3 shells (the classic Gnome Panel and Gnome Shell) and several others, including Unity, which also has a "search panel". – Jo-Erlend Schinstad Apr 7 '12 at 4:59
That's OK - thanks. – Exeleration-G Apr 7 '12 at 6:39

2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

I was curious about this myself, greping around in /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui I found reference to contactDisplay in overview.js. You should be able to comment out the two lines: 

const ContactDisplay = imports.ui.contactDisplay;
this.addSearchProvider(new ContactDisplay.ContactSearchProvider());

and that will take care of it. Just tested it, and nothing broke immediately (your results may vary). I wont make any assumptions of your skill set so to comment these lines

Alt+F2 gksu gedit /usr/share/gnome-shell/js/ui/overview.js find the two lines listed and place // (comment markers) in front of them, save, and Contacts are gone from search results.

The search panel you refer to is called the overview. That may help with future questions.

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Great, it works and it's an elegant solution, too. Thanks for telling me how to comment in a .js file, because I was already going with the #s :-P – Exeleration-G Apr 7 '12 at 6:55
1  
A more elegant solution would be an extension that removed it, because if gnome-shell updates than you will have to go back in and do it again. Maybe I'll work on that. One of the annoying things I find about the contacts is duplicates from different programs. – Gary Apr 7 '12 at 14:02
I try this, but never found the lines :( – DrKenobi Mar 6 at 4:35
up vote -1 down vote

It is by default search handling technique in gnome , better way is to use synapse for search, it is very light and very fast, plus it provides filters to search. it will solve your problem,

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Or add a launcher for chromium so you so not need to search for it all the time ;) – bodhi.zazen Dec 17 '11 at 14:43
Thanks, but that's not really what I'm looking for. – Exeleration-G Dec 17 '11 at 19:05

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